What is the last safe prejudice? Against what, or whom, is it still reasonable to harbour an irrational dislike? Is there any area where the expression of an opinion isn’t at risk of becoming a judgmental fatwa likely to damn you for ever as an intolerant bigot? Well, I’m not ashamed to say that I travel through life carrying a barrel-load of prejudices. I harbour more perverse and irrational dislikes than Alf Garnett, Lady Bracknell and the Grand Lizard of the Ole Alabama Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan put together. In no particular order, I entertain a completely unreasonable antipathy towards BMW X5s, eggnog lattes, Stephen Poliakoff dramas, shearling coats, leather trousers, cheese with fruit in it, meat served with fruit, any and all tanning products, all male jewellery, all body piercing, tattoos other than on grizzled old salts, house plants, motor sports, especially Formula One, polo, multistorey car parks, postwar jazz, home-improvement programmes, Michael Moore, the Principality of Monaco, radicchio, Radio 4’s Saturday Live, themed pubs, socks made with anything other than wool, calls to modernise the Royal Family, Richard Dawkins, people who post fantastically reactionary and offensive comments on blogs denouncing politicians for sell-out centrist cowardice and then refuse to use their real names, scented candles and patterned underwear for men.
But while all these features of modern life provoke in me feelings somewhere between disquiet and dislike, there’s really only one contemporary phenomenon that drives me to a state of foam-flecked, spittle-spattered fury. My most profound prejudice is against the corruption of English by the invasion of a particular new set of words. Some of these words are entirely fresh coinages, others just novel deployments of old language. But what unites all these words is the preening self-regard their use now conveys. They are the linguistic equivalent of Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice or Boycie in Only Fools and Horses – they combine pretension, effrontery and vulgarity in perfect balance.
The word that comes top of my hatelist is “source”, as in “Nigella sources all her cranberries from organic farm shops”, or “Mario sourced all the pieces for the shoot at vintage stores in his native Co Durham” or “We source all the ingredients for your Thai seawood spa-wrap and Tibetan chin massage from local suppliers”. What’s wrong with saying buy? Is it too drearily commercial to say you actually bought the damn things? And if you are indeed so opposed to the intrusion of shabby commercialism into your creative enterprise, why are you charging so bloody much for everything yourself? Take my word for it (and my word in this particular case is “fleece”): when you are being sold anything that has been “sourced” or has ingredients that have been “sourced”, what you are really being sold is a pup. The word is intended to convey some painstaking process, as arduous as a Victorian explorer’s transcontinental trek (we’ve found the source of the Blue Nile!) and it is therefore deployed when the seller wants to suggest that his product (sourced exclusively from grass-fed Dutch designers) can have been found only after the exercise of remarkable care and attention. When faced with anything that has been “sourced”, just say no. And remember: any piece of clothing that is called a “piece”, as in “my favourite piece this season is a Xan DeWildebeeste pea coat” is, also, automatically going to be overpriced. Ditto anything “vintage”. The word is secondhand, dear. And just because Cheval Blanc improves with age – so that a 1988 vintage is perfect now – the same doesn’t hold for leggings.
Next on my list is “gallerist”. To those of you yet to come across it, all I can say is, lucky you. Gallerist is a new coinage for what you or I would once have called an “art dealer”. I’ve nothing against art dealing per se – while it’s not a profession that yet seems to have as many state-school entrants as, say, the Irish peerage or White’s Club, we need art dealers if we’re to generate and sustain interest in new artistic endeavour. But the way in which, none-too-subtly, dealers have been rebadged as “gallerists” is, like the use of “sourced”, just another way of cloaking commercial activity in language designed to suggest there’s something deeper and more noble going on. The gallerist is meant to be seen as another part of the creative process, someone as involved in framing the concept on show as the original artist. And indeed with much modern conceptual art, where it is shown matters almost as much as any of the effort that’s gone into creating something new. In that sense the gallerist (“I have put you on next to Jake and Dinos in a show called The New Erotic Neuroticism”) could perhaps be seen as a creative spirit. Or you could equally see that conceptual art is just one giant exercise in commercialism.
Talking of all this commercial activity brings my next hate: “going forward”. As in: “We hope to increase growth figures in quarter four and, going forward, take advantage of the emerging markets of North Korea and Somalia.” Or: “We have already begun rolling out our new personal toe-care pilots and, going forward, we hope to have targeted nail-cutting for all those whose needs in this area were neglected in the Tory years.” Why can’t people just say “in the future”, or even just “next”. Why do businessmen and politicians think that using management-speak jargon instils confidence? We all now know that people using this sort of language a) don’t know what they’re talking about, b) are trying to bamboozle us by hiding behind technical terms or buzzwords intended to connote mastery of modern trends, and c) have long ago lost touch with what it’s like to talk about their work in human terms. Going forward, can we have zero tolerance for this paradigm shift? And can we source all our words with a little more care?
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Let’s drink (and eat) to happiness
I was intrigued by research last week which shows that life becomes ever more depressing after your twenties, until you reach a nadir at 44, before recovering your joie de vivre at 70. The findings chime with my General Theory of Happiness, which I think reflects the circumstances in which you can enjoy contentment. It all comes down to lunch.
It was, I think, Keith Waterhouse who said the most depressing words were: “Shall we go straight in?” And he was on to something. People who have a proper lunch, prefaced by a libation to the Gods of the Table and accompanied by something cheering from sunnier climates (and no, I don’t mean olive oil), are generally the happiest I know. I remember in my twenties the sheer fun of a couple of pints or a bottle of red at lunch. And I look on in envy now at those, more advanced in years, who settle in with a brimming carafe for a good session at the trencher while I power through my Perrier and hurry on to an afternoon of tragically clear-headed labour. They are suffused with a daily draught of happiness that now eludes me. It’s not the drink itself that does the cheering-up, though it helps; it’s the knowledge that one has the leisure, and freedom from imminent responsibility, to cut loose around lunchtime which is, I think, the generator of happiness. So roll on retirement and the comfort of the corner table, a bottle of mein host’s best and the happiness that £11.95 can still buy.
Split personalities
The big conundrum at present is what makes people split over Hillary v Barack. Daniel Finkelstein, for example, is Obama-positive, while David Aaronovitch is a Clintonista. They’re both centrist on domestic issues and hawkish on foreign affairs, and Danny is no neophiliac (his first choice would be John McCain). Yet they’re split. As are Mrs G and I. I have a soft spot for Hill, she goes gooey for Barack. Labour acquaintances are similarly divided. Why? Is it Macs v PCs? Or something subtler?